A conference with cow bells, what's not to like?

As some of you may know, I'm in the middle of a whirlwind of conferences. At the moment, I'm two down with one to go. Just to give you a recap, in the past two weeks I've presented one poster, given two talks, attended upwards of 60 talks, visited 4 poster sessions, met and memorized the names of 30 new networking acquaintances, and eaten 20 restaurant meals. Conference time can be exhausting.

The good news is, that sometimes you get to visit a place that's cool, like Braunwald, Switzerland. This tiny little village is perched some 1300 m (4265 ft) up along the side of a mountain. It's quaint character is increased by the fact that no cars are allowed, and the only transport up there is a cable car from the town of Linthal in the valley below. It was really a beautiful place to be, surrounded by rolling green hills and glistening white mountaintops.

View from the hotel over the Glarus Valley

Cows Grazing

This cow had a particularly loud bell

Riding scooters down the mountain.
A group of us took another cable car 200 meters further up,
then rented these scooters to ride back down. Super fun.
Here I am posing with Dan, a fellow post-doc
who works in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Green hills in contrast with white mountains

I have to say though, one of my favorite things was the cows. As you many know, it's common to tie a cow bell around the neck of each member of your herd, so that you can always locate your flock. Multiply that times dozens of cows spread over dozens of farms, and you've got a continuous little cow bell symphony each day. I took a video to try to demonstrate this effect:

My other favorite things was the fire hydrants, which were painted to look like miniature people:



All in all a very nice conference. I think it's inspired me to look into Switzerland as a weekend getaway option. Either for hiking in the fall, or skiing in the winter. It may be an expensive country, but when you see how pretty it is you really don't mind.